THE STORY OF MY LIFE: Roots

Tomorrow will be my birthday.  No BD cake, but I already had one the day our 15 Craigside dining room closed last month because of the Delta variant.  One of my table mates, Bob, and I were born one day apart.  We are both dragons.  Our combined ages add up to 174.  You can calculate how old we are.

I was yesterday sent one of those compilations we regularly get in our e-mail, this one about growing up in Honolulu in the 40's and 50's.  I'll share with you a few of them, for those anecdotes essentially tell the story of my life:

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  Windward side... taro patches... rice paddies...water buffalo... When you mentioned Kaneohe, everyone knew you were talking about the pupule house. When the tallest building in Honolulu was the Aloha Tower... Radio personalities like.. J. Aku Head Pupule on KGMB in the mornings saying 'OK, all you SLOBS, it's time to GET UP!!!' Hey, no forget Lucky Luck's 'Lucky you come Hawaii!'
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  When the site of Ala Moana Shopping Center was a big swamp. Waialae-Kahala was mostly pig farms. and the area next to the airport was a neighborhood called Damon Tract...

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  Flipping milk caps on the sidewalk during recess... and deciding who got to go first by playing Jung Ken Po... And when you did something dumb everybody yelled...'Bakatare You!' And when you did something naughty they shook their finger and said...' A hana koko lele!'
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  Going to high school football games at the ole stadium --- lovingly called the Termite Palace. Guys getting their kicks sparking the wahines from under the stands..

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  Harry Bridges, Teamsters Union leader, calling union dock strikes...causing food shortages... Sad Sam Ichinose... Kau Kau Korner, the meeting place with the 'Crossroads of the Pacific' sign out front, the most photographed sign in the world...
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  When those lucky people who lived in Waikiki sold their lots for $5.00  (today??  don't know, $500, or more, for the average piece of real estate in San Francisco is $676) a square foot and we all thought they were getting rich... Everyone discussing the 'Mauka Arterial' and when it was finally completed we all got lost because we didn't know East from West... All I knew was Ewa side and Diamond Head side... Mauka and Makai.  Holding the 49th State Fair year after year and finally becoming the 50th state in 1959... Looking at Diamond Head...
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  Alfred Apaka... Kalima Brothers... Gabby Pahinui...slack key...steel guitars... Don' forget Auntie Genoa Keawe.
• You can go catch Samoan Crab, White Crab, Hawaiian Crab and dig for Oysters and Clams in West Loch.

• 
  English standard schools (they were dismantled in 1960, but that is Roosevelt High School which once was one)...Japanese language lessons... When nobody locked their houses or cars...'Right on the kinipopo'... When anything that said 'Made in Japan' was junk... 
• 
  Shave Ice on a hot day... Finding Japanese green, white and lavender glass fishing balls in various sizes floating in to the beaches on the North shore... 'Calabash cousins'... Watching sea weed being harvested on a weekend... Torch fishing at night...
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  Going to the Saimin Stand for a bowl of saimin for 15 cents and BBQ stick for 10 cents... wonton mein for 25 cents. And, big cone sushi for 5 cents a pc...many were seen with big pots taking their hot noodle soup home to share with their family.

All the above I remember well.  I begin the story of my life with my grandparents:

• On my mother's side, her father left Japan when she was born because her mother passed away at birth.  She was left with his parents, and he boarded a ship for the USA, which stopped in Honolulu, where he jumped overboard and was always an unnaturalized citizen, an illegal alien  He got married and sent for her at the age of 13.  There were six siblings, and the family got together at his house every Sunday.  During the first four years of my life I was the only child in this group, and being so loved, that had to help mold my personality.

• 
  My father's side was almost a dark secret.  He never talked about his childhood.  I recreated this from doing a thorough roots search.    That image above?  Click on roots search.  I use this logo on all my SIMPLE SOLUTION books.

• 
  In my search, I actually followed the path of my grandfather Kenjiro's parents around 1870 when they caught a ship from Akita to Otaru, bore Kenjiro, moved to Sapporo when the population was around 2000 (it is now 2 million), then on to Utashinai, which was even further north.  I am the only one I know whose roots lead back to Hokkaido.
• 
  Kenjiro was sent to the USA soon after 1890 to learn something.  Whatever it was, on his way home to Japan in 1900 he stopped in Kilauea on Kauai, got married, had my father, built a 3 kW hydroelectric power plant in Wainiha, and fell while at work and died at the age of 33 six months before it was completed in 1906.  That's me a century or so later when it was still producing 3 kW with essentially the same equipment.
• 
  My father was shuttled back and forth to Japan, while his mother married a news reporter.  Must have been a terrible childhood for him.  He was smarter than me, but from the stories I heard, his father, Kenjiro, was absolutely brilliant.  And the rumor is that one of his grandmothers was a female samurai.
• Thus, I had three grandfathers, three grandmothers, and maybe a great-great grandmother who was a samurai.

• 
  Only during the search did I find out that his name was Kenjiro, and I was named after him.  As I am a second son, I expected to find some information of his older brother in Utashinai.  However, it turns out that Kenji (the ji) is the second son, while Kenjiro (jiro) denotes first son.

Tomorrow I continue the story of my life growing up in Kakaako and heading off to Stanford.  That's me with my dog Blackie.

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